The people of Knockdhu - Part 2

The "Knock" - courtesy of Dramming.com

My friend Oliver Klimek visited the lovely distillery of Knockdhu in 2011 and wrote this great little article: 

http://www.dramming.com/2011/05/21/dramming-in-scotland-10-knockdhu/

It certainly wasn't as a result oh him writing the piece that put these whiskies on my radar, but once I found them I did scour the websites to see what other people had written. 

I love the fact that this distillery is one of the smallest in Scotland and as mentioned in Part 1, there is no automation. For me it represents a very tight knit group of people who work together closely in the creation of a great whisky. What else could better defines my lovely whisky fabric. 

Ladies & Gents, we continue with Part 2 which is a short profile of: Alastair Legge.

Alastair arriving in style

Alastair, Ali for short, was born in August 1972 and is another of the shift supervisors at the distillery. He along with his brother Fraser who also works at Knockdhu (we will get to him later) were born and raised on the neighbouring farm. Literally "home grown" you could say. Ali started working at the distillery in January of 2007, also coming from a mechanical background (time served motor mechanic) like Alex from part 1. 

His previous job was to maintain and keep a fleet of lorries on the road for a local haulage company. He is married with two kids of their own but he and his wife Jane have also been fostering children for a few years now. Alistair interests are his American cars which he has 3 or 4 of and his dogs. Nine Australian Cattle dogs to be precise which he also breeds. In July of this year he had two litters of six pups each which means 12 little fur balls were terrorising all the big dogs!  

 Ali is a very handy lad to have around since his extensive knowledge of mechanics and welding are a tremendous asset.  

This year, Knockdhu only shut down in July for three weeks. They call it their silent season and it's when the essential maintenance or upgrades get done to the plant not to mention it is when the guys get a well earned holiday. Other than stopping for two more days at Christmas and New Year the distillery is producing AnCnoc for 49 weeks of the year and making 1.8 million litres which is a fair bit more than the 450,000 they made back in 1989 when they reopened. 

So that was shift supervisor #2, stay tuned for the rest of the series in the next few weeks.  

Always learning, always having fun!

Johanne